Connecticut school massacre

AdamFencepost said:
SneakerNet, you may be thinking of the shooting in Jonesboro, Arkansas.

Two boys took their grandfather's guns: 2 semi-automatic rifles, a bolt-action rifle and 4 handguns. Waiting outside the school, 1 boy pulled the fire alarm. They killed 4 kids and 1 adult.

I am not sure that "Americans have made a choice to take back this country from people with similar opinion of yours." It seems to me that every American is entitled to his or her opinion. We may simply be in a time period when 1 or 2 generations must grow old and die before 1 or another opinion becomes a matter of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

Opinions last awhile. Guns last longer. My father, who will soon be 95, owns a rifle that was made before World War 2. It can and has killed a bull elk. I own a rifle that is even older than his. Both would be antiques in a military sense. Neither will be unusable, not this year nor next.

Considerable confusion seems to happen whenever there is a suggestion of more controls on gun sales. Some folks equate controls of gun sales with black helicopters dropping into yards and the police taking away their guns.

There are laws about guns in every country that isn't a failed state. Comparing laws worldwide is also reason for some to begin tipping over lawn furniture and barricading themselves behind American exceptionalism.

My patriotism is questioned altho' you know nothing more about me than that I question the wisdom of having so many guns in this country and the ease with which they fall into the hands of those who would misuse them. Insulting non-Americans also seems to come easy. Here is one more group that the NRA has insulted in their efforts to limit gun deaths - the Australians.

Of course, these places like Canada and Australia have very limited wide open spaces for using firearms for hunting . . . I'm being sarcastic. But, for all the hunting that may go on in these countries, there is a concern about Unintentional Gun Deaths. Let's take a look at how Australia compares to the US from the University of Sydney:

guns_zps33ed9792.jpg


Nearly 14 times the number of people killed "by accident" here, than there. (I won't bring back "Larry" to try to show 14 Americans versus 1 Australian). Please, you have done such a good job insulting most everyone else - go ahead and make some nasty comments about the Australians. Other countries can be easily compared (& insulted) by using the link.
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feel free to move to Australia.
 
AdamFencepost said:
It is tragic that these things will happen again.

And, it is not just here. The Dumblain shooting that caz12 mentioned, was in Scotland. We just all need to work on this. Parents, teachers, citizens.

There was a knifing of children in China yesterday. The crazy guy hurt 22 school kids there.
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so what are you going to do? proposing that we should ban knife too?
 
CrazyPaul said:
So small? Have you noticed there are more copycats than before?
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How many schools are there in this country? How many school days are there in a year?How many shooting have occured at them, ever?
 
ambrosia said:
How many schools are there in this country? How many school days are there in a year?How many shooting have occured at them, ever?
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It's not all about schools. Everywhere like a workplace, church, theater, cafe, mall, etc. I would call it terrorism.
 
CrazyPaul said:
It's not all about schools. Everywhere like a workplace, church, theater, cafe, mall, etc. I would call it terrorism.
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most massacres do not meet the legal definition of terrorism. does the shooter have a religious, political or, ideological goal?
 
This is a really strange tragedy. Previous tragedies of this type seemed to have almost an understandable reason (which in turn has resulted in anti-bullying campaigns and more mental health awareness), but I can't think of any reason why someone would want to shoot a 6 year old.

I'm not sure if gun control of banning guns is really the issue. It's of course logical to assume that if no one has a gun or if guns are less accessible, then there would be less gun-related murders. But even if we try to rid the nation of guns right now, how will you collect all the guns that are already out there?

Rather than try to limit or gather all the guns that are out there, it might be easier to change the culture. Teach better social skills, make mental health help readily available and encourage people to use it, and discourage guns from popular media. It should not even pop into people's minds that shooting someone is a way to deal with a conflict: That's totally overreacting. They should be thinking about moving away, or complaining to the boss, or reaching out to friends or family for support, not "if I just get rid of this person...."

There is already guns out there. We can't change that without even more harm. But we can change the culture, as in how guns are portrayed and used with the next generation.


At this rate, schools will become like high-security prisons, and teachers will all be double certified as policemen. Do we really want to go that route? What happened to schools being centers of the community? Do we want to treat our students like prisoners merely for the sake of safety?
 
CrazyPaul said:
What about terrorizing people for no reason?
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I think on a very basic definition of terrorism, school shootings do fall under terrorism.

Does it strike fear in the hearts of students, their parents and faculty, to the point where they alter their lifestyles to avoid this perceived danger?

Then yes, it is a type of terrorism, but as far as we know, we don't know if this happened because the suspect had a dispute with one person, or if he had something against children, or if he felt remorseful about this particular school, or because the person resented the education system.

For most people, they will not be concerned that a school shooting is likely to occur in their school. Schools in NY did not dismiss early on Friday or cancel school for Monday.

However for the school district this event did affect, the schools will probably not be back in session until after new years because the students will be too frightened to return...


Actually, the idea that someone would attack someone for "ideologies" seems kind of far-fetched to me. I tend to consider that there are legitimate, specific reasons why people attack people (such as attacking a country that's supplying arms to the country that's invading your country) rather than because "god said so" or "you people don't follow the same values as us".
 
shimo said:
I think on a very basic definition of terrorism, school shootings do fall under terrorism.
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it still does not meet the very basic legal definition of terrorism. don'tuse Webster dictionary.

shimo said:
Does it strike fear in the hearts of students, their parents and faculty, to the point where they alter their lifestyles to avoid this perceived danger?

Then yes, it is a type of terrorism, but as far as we know, we don't know if this happened because the suspect had a dispute with one person, or if he had something against children, or if he felt remorseful about this particular school, or because the person resented the education system.

For most people, they will not be concerned that a school shooting is likely to occur in their school. Schools in NY did not dismiss early on Friday or cancel school for Monday.

However for the school district this event did affect, the schools will probably not be back in session until after new years because the students will be too frightened to return...
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then by your logic, most shooting-related such as gang shooting, bank robbery, etc are terrorist because it strikes fear into people from coming back again?

shimo said:
Actually, the idea that someone would attack someone for "ideologies" seems kind of far-fetched to me. I tend to consider that there are legitimate, specific reasons why people attack people (such as attacking a country that's supplying arms to the country that's invading your country) rather than because "god said so" or "you people don't follow the same values as us".
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that's precisely what terrorism is. they attack people through violent coercion for their political, religious, or ideological goal - KKK. Al Queda.
 
CrazyPaul said:
I said "for no reason", a hate crime has a reason, hate.

Aurora shooting and others, I see them as terror.
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show me any shooting case where it happened for no reason.
 
Even if the reasoning is faulty, psychological forensics can study, find out why, and use the information to prevent such events from happening again.
 
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